The Year When The Consensus Broke Down

The republic entered the age of adolescence when we finally began our struggle with the post-Nehruvian loss of innocence.

The war with Pakistan and the cascading economic dislocation it brought; the unsatisfactory peace at Tashkent; a drought and food shortage; the devaluation of the rupee; the humiliating dependence on pl-480 wheat from the United States; and widespread unrest—all this combined to sour up the national elan.

All the certainties and certitudes of the Nehruvian era seemed unworkable. Or at least were contested rather vigorously. The old order, with all its pretensions to a copycat British civility and Brahminical gentleness, had become dysfunctional; the search for a new matrix of ideas and promises could hardly be postponed. And we were gloriously confused. Disparate forces, ideas and impulses were unleashed, and they kicked off an inevitable war over the direction and soul of the Indian polity. And all those who manned the institutions pushed the envelope.

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The ball was set rolling by none other than the President of India. In his last address to the nation, on the eve of Republic Day, 1967, Dr S. Radhakrishnan, a very learned man, but deeply unhappy that he was not likely to get a second term, lamented the “widespread incompetence and the gross mismanagement of our resources”. And, a mere two days later, on January 27, J.R.D. Tata talked of a “mood of frustration and despair” and asked for the abolition of the Planning Commission.

After treatment for a nose broken by a stone
-thrower in Orissa

It was a great year for the voter. Democratic India came of age during the 1967 general elections. The voter turnout was the highest to date and the voters themselves were inclined to turn out of office a few of their “masters”. It was the first time Indian voters had been asked to vote for the grand old party without the grand old man, Jawaharlal Nehru, being around as the reassuring totem of national sanity and clarity. The election itself unleashed pent-up bitterness and acrimony. In Bhubaneswar, prime minister Indira Gandhi’s campaign meeting was disrupted. A stone was thrown at her and she had to leave the venue with a broken nose. A new low.

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Post Nehru, the Congress was deeply enfeebled on account of a clash of ideas, egos and ambitions. The leadership had lost its capacity to accommodate new forces and new voices; not only that, it was no longer able to carry forward the Nehru-Patel tradition of disparate personalities staying together and working together in the interest of a larger purpose; the much-touted high command itself was divided, and this bad odour of factionalism at the top had seeped down to the state capitals. In state after state, important leaders—Vijayaraje Scindia in Madhya Pradesh, Mahamaya Prasad Sinha and the raja of Ramgarh in Bihar, Kumbharam Arya and the maharaja of Jhalawar in Rajasthan, Harekrushna Mahatab in Orissa, Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee in West Bengal—all of them walked out of the grand old party to set up separate shops and to provide respectability to the anti-Congress formations. And then, the voters did their own bit of ass-kicking. Powerful chief ministers like K.B. Sahay, P.C. Sen and M. Bhaktavatsalam and central ministers like C. Subramaniam were made to bite the dust. By the first week of March, it was clear that the voters in the fourth general elections had put an end to the 20-year-old Congress supremacy of the country’s political landscape.

And, of course, the loudest explosion took place in the Virudunagar constituency in what was then Madras state. An unknown 26-year-old student leader inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Congress president, K. Kamaraj, the great party boss who was serenaded as the very ideal embodiment of “old Congress values”. This explosion from Virudunagar was heard the loudest in New Delhi. The man who was hoping to be kingmaker found himself with a palpably diminished stature.

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Its internal preoccupations had allowed the coming together of anti-Congress forces. The brilliant and bitter Ram Manohar Lohia had his revenge on his life-long betes noires, Nehru and his daughter, when almost all political formations, from the right to the left, came to subscribe to his thesis of anti-Congressism. His personal animosity towards Indira Gandhi got reworked into a very successful electoral strategy. By grafting intellectual respectability around anti-Congressism, Lohia made it possible for the communal, feudal, right-wing and regional parties to sup with the Communists and socialists in state after state. The parties of the Right Reaction—the Swatantra Party and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh—increased their tally in the Lok Sabha from 32 to 77, while the Communist score went up from 29 seats to 43.

Voters in two states, Madras and West Bengal, crossed a new threshold. Madras was angry with the Congress; the anger had begun with the anti-Hindi agitation and kept simmering. Suddenly, the magic touch abandoned the grand organisation, so vividly associated with the “great” Kamaraj. In 1967, two very unlikely political personalities—C.N. Annadurai and C. Rajagopalachari—joined hands to dislodge the Congress. The Congress was never to come back to power in Madras state, to be renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969.

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It was also the beginning of a new era of populism: The DMK extravagantly promised that if voted to power, its government would give two measures of rice for a rupee. The state Congress leaders found the promise “an impossible proposition”. The DMK’s electoral success began the age of political paternalism. All Tamil political parties since have finessed the populist strategy.

Crossed, boxed Volunteers at a booth outside a polling station in Mumbai, 1967. (Photograph by Getty Images, From Outlook 05 November 2012)

Equally significant was the outcome of the West Bengal elections. On March 2, the first non-Congress government, the United Front, comprising the CPI(M), the CPI and the Bangla Congress, came to power, setting in motion an inevitable confrontation between the state government and the various CPI(M) dissidents, including Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal, and Jangal Santhal, who expressed their disagreements in a violent idiom at Naxalbari (in the Darjeeling district to the north of West Bengal). A similar ideological disagreement, though not coordinated, in Srikakulam, invited violent suppression. Inspired by Mao, various Naxal actions began their romantic experiment with different kinds of violence against “class enemies” in Calcutta. And rural Bengal witnessed the grand spectacle of a war on local landlords, involving guns, bows and arrows. It was only a matter of time before the state responded with its own coercion, setting in motion a “movement” that remains untamed till this day.

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It was evident something was wrong, and something different would have to be done. An internal debate was on: whether the state had the capacity to be effective; and whether a realignment of political forces was in order to make it effective. Soon after the fourth general elections, the Congress undertook an analysis of its performance and came to decide on a ten-point programme which, in turn, became the basis of a great political struggle in and out of the Grand Old Party.

When the votes were counted, the Congress majority in the Lok Sabha stood drastically reduced. It was by no means certain that Indira Gandhi would get automatically re-elected as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in the fourth Lok Sabha. Even though they had been humiliated at the polls, the party bosses were unprepared to let the young prime minister have her way. Indeed a great game was put in play: how to control Indira Gandhi. She had been saddled with Morarji Desai as deputy prime minister and finance minister. The deputy was soon complaining that “chhokri sunti nahin hai (the girl does not listen)”.

Word war An anti-Hindi protest in Madras

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Just about the time the results of the fourth general elections were being collated, there was a little noticed judicial judgment that reignited a veritable ideological war over the soul of Indian democracy. On February 27, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice K. Subba Rao, gave an unprecedented ruling in a case known as I.G. Golak Nath versus the State of Punjab. A divided bench ruled that Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution was not unqualified and it could not be used to curtail or restrict the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. This decision, delivered by a deeply divided bench, was understood by all to be a triumph for the landed classes and other property interests. The bottomline of the Subba Rao judgement was that private property could not longer be appropriated for “public interest”. The court had nullified one of the most intoxicating axioms of socialistic rhetoric and welfare state practices. The progressive voices were mortified : “...the road to socialism (stands) barred”, pithily observed an editorial in Mainstream. On the other hand, this was a heady moment for the right-wing conservative voices and interests. C. Rajagopalachari, once Nehru’s comrade-in-arms and now an unforgiving foe of his daughter, crooned: “A great moral victory this decision of the Supreme Court has conferred on the Swatantra Party.”

After the Golak Nath judgement, and after the Swatantra Party formed a government in Orissa, the right wing was on a high. The feudal princes and maharajas had never had it so good in democratic India. Now, brilliantly guided by the formidable Rajagopalachari and Minoo Masani, they made a breathtaking move. In April, the republic was to elect a new president. Indira Gandhi had already ignored Kamaraj’s suggestion that Radhakrishnan get a second term (one more act of “defiance” on her part) and chose to elevate Vice-President Zakir Hussain to Rashtrapati Bhavan, thereby ensuring that the republic would get its first Muslim head.

Rajagopalachari, Annadurai. (Photograph by The HIndu)

Masani walked into Chief Justice K. Subba Rao’s residence and induced him to become the Opposition’s presidential candidate. The first great act of institutional impropriety was committed. It was the judiciary, that too its head, who committed the first grand solecism. What was worse, such was the confusion and such was the at-the-fork-in-the-road moment that this grave impropriety went largely unnoticed. No one had the courage to question that the head of the judiciary was getting involved in political games. This act of partisanship did not go unnoticed by the radical voices. The time to settle a score will come later. Justice Subba Rao’s partisanship had set the stage for a “committed judiciary” demand a few years later.

Towards the end of the year, one individual departure and one arrival came to matter. Ram Manohar Lohia passed away in October in Wellingdon Hospital; without his iconoclastic ideas and impulses, the anti-Congress camp got mired in its own unavoidable confusion. Second, Indira Gandhi decided to induct P.N. Haksar as principal secretary to the prime minister. The new man in the prime minister’s office was to quarterback an energetic centralisation of the Indian State’s resources, setting the stage for the 1969 Congress split, the 1971 electoral battle and the Emergency.

Khare, a senior journalist, has served as media advisor to PM Manmohan Singh

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In India also the cost of production is higher than Rs 5 in the example discussed. As I mentioned before, Govt.of India has put all life saving drugs for example sulphamethoxaxole and trimethoprim ( general anti-biotic which works against any type of infection) or medicines for TB,Diabetis ,BP etc., As for as I know there are 5 categories and category 5 medicines are left to the manufacturing company discretion. So we have tonics etc., under this category.

Govt. fixes the price of life saving drugs and the difference amount between production cost and govt. prices are paid by govt. in the form tax waivers on other category drugs.

>>>> Unless we learn to critically analyse facts and learn from our mistakes, we will never be able to reclaim our rightful place under the sun. We will only end up worshipping false gods.

D.L.NARAYAN

For that you require enlightened society. Even the educated lack scientific and rational thought in our society.

We are gradually evolving no doubt but the all pervading cynicism and opportunism in the society is undoing our economic progress. We need a great leader to leave us a lasting legacy.I consider that our erst while national leaders failed to set us on the right path and we drifted for too long.

As for the international norms, one company for example a US pharmaceutical company would have patent rights only for 15 years. After that it would be an international property and any one can manufacture this drug with same pharmacological methods or by adopting a different one.

A drug is a chemical compound, and if you discover its signature you can copy it. This is a legitimate business if the patent has expired. If the patent does not apply to India they can also legitimately reverse engineer the drug.

But the point is that they have a drug whose efficacy has been tested and approved by various regulatory authorities in the West. This is a lengthy and expensive business and many drugs under development fail, or they have too many side effects. The Indian companies have bypassed all that, thats why they can offer a drug at Rs 5 a tablet . Thats not too say that Western pharma companies charge too much. In some cases they may well do.

NTPC was awarded the Pakhri Barwadih block in December 2004. Their latest target for commencing mining operations is 2013! Reliance Power was allocated Sasan blocks in August 2007 and has already started production by September 2012.

It is only a matter of time before Indira Gandhi is usurped by the parivar. After all, Vajpayee called her Durga and her Emergency Rule is a working template for their intended Ram Rajya(or Parivar Rajya).

A country is respected by others only if it is an economic superpower. Japan, South Korea and Australia, to name a few, are examples of countries which focused on developing their economies and not their brawn. A poor country with nuclear weapons is treated like a pariah like for example North Korea.

This where Indira Gandhi failed. Instead of facilitating wealth creation, she placed all kinds of obstacles in the path of entrepreneurs. She thought that military strength would help India get rid of poverty.She wanted to have a nuclear button so she allowed merit to flourish in the fields of Nuclear Science and Space research. Elsewhere, we were a miserable failure. It was a economy of perennial shortages. It took decades to get a telephone or a gas connection or even a humble scooter. Industries were penalised if they produced above their sanctioned capacites. All that the kids of today take for granted were luxuries back then. As someone who started working in the early 70's, as a victim of myopic economic policies, I know how bad things were back then.

Bank Nationalisation is touted as a great boon for the poor. Utter rubbish. It did not result in a boost to the economy nor was there any massive creation of employment opportunities. Banks became inefficient and built up huge NPAs as a result of "creative accounting" which led to siphoning off of funds into the pockets of the rich and the powerful. The lady just wanted to dry up political funding of the Opposition parties by these banks, who, by and large, supported the free market economic policies espoused by the Swatantra Party.

Then, there is talk of the liberation of Bangladesh. The creation of East Pakistan was a quixotic experiment by the British which was bound to fail. The West Pakistanis dug their own grave and all it needed was a competent military intervention which was ensured by General Maneckshaw and his team. We had nearly a lakh of POWs and lots of territory in the west; yet, instead of using these powerful bargaining chips, we gave them back to Pakistan without extracting any concessions from them. In the euphoria of the moment, we lost a golden opportunity to defang the venomous neighbour. All that the Shimla agreement did was to confer a thoroughly undeserved legitimacy to a charlatan called Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the sam guy who vowed to eat grass, if needed, but promised to fight a thousand year war to "liberate" Kashmir.

Unless we learn to critically analyse facts and learn from our mistakes, we will never be able to reclaim our rightful place under the sun. We will only end up worshipping false gods.

I hope you know what is IP or BP or USP (Indian pharmacopeia or British or US pharmacopeia).

India is exporting medicines to USA from companies like Reddy's Labs, Cipla or Lupin and others. I don’t know what is this "copy" of western medicines as you wrote about Indian medicines. Invention or "development" of a new molecule means you have invented a new medicine or a new chemical. As for the international norms, one company for example a US pharmaceutical company would have patent rights only for 15 years. After that it would be an international property and any one can manufacture this drug with same pharmacological methods or by adopting a different one.

Indian medicines are not only cheaper due to cheap labour but also more effective than some of the medicines, for example, a salbutamol inhaler (for asthma) manufactured by US companies.

About green revolution that swept the world is all about new high yielding wheat varieties. But very few countries succeeded in green revolution, as I already mentioned USSR of the time completely failed and China did not achieve self-sufficiency in food production even now. Green revolution entails subsidies,agri universities, land reforms, reservoirs and dams and access to grameena banks and most importantly political stability with brute majority and charismatic leadership to move the masses. Indian food varieties do not confine to wheat alone. Our scientists developed so many high yielding rice varieties and also Norman Borlaug’s wheat breed is adopted to Indian conditions with genetic mutation.

About license raj , I do accept that it would be like applying brakes where not necessary but at the time of Indira Gandhi I believe it was required at least first half of her rule. About liberalization, India was not ready for opening up the economy( at the time) which entailed the risk of becoming a stooge of US and other western countries , if we could not cope with the competition. For good or bad Indira Gandhi thought that such an access to Indian economy and market would make USA’s grip over us very strong and we would become helpless.

As Pinaki Ray pointed out she gave maximum freedom to DRDA ,ISRO etc., and kept these institutions out of reach of dirty politics.

Today we opened our economy not only to foreigners but also to our own crooked "business men" who are mining bauxite ,iron ore and Gali Janardhan Reddy type of people who are totally worthless have become billionaires by illegally transporting hematite or bauxite to China. Even Coal mines are opened to private industry under liberalization. We are coming back to zero. This was the situation under British. Private tycoons owned coal mines and the exploitation levels were inhuman,which included even sexual exploitation of labour and rising slums around mining areas. We see this in Hindi films of Indira’s time, even though by the time coal mining was nationalized.

All that is private need not be good. You cannot expect private industry to build dams, reservoirs and do nuclear research. And private enterprise never was good at coal mining.

Hey, dont get too high ... China IS now an economic and military super power taking on USA despite Agni-5s ... its in India's interest not to repeat the mistakes of 1962 for which Indira's pa bears full responsibilty ...

She loved India (Like Stalin loved soviet union, churchill loved Britain). And many (not all but many) of her dictats and decisions were influenced by her like and patriotism of India.

I agree with you that she was a patriot to the core. But there is nothing more dangerous than a patriot who begins to think that he or she is indispensible. They begin to take shortcuts, become dictatorial. They only listen to a closed circle of sycophants.

In the life of a nation, nobody is indispensible. That goes for Narendra Modi as well. Mrs Gandhi's life and times should be read as an cautionary tale

@The Contrarian

thanks, sometimes this place does nothing for my blood pressure ( which is usually normal)

Just to reiterate to all those few who have open minds, the overall legacy of Indira Gandhi in terms of economic development is extremely negative. Als her legacy in terms of handing the constitutional institutions and principles of governing India were negative. Indira has given more problems to India than any ruler - and Emergency is just one of them.

But the one and one redeeming feature about her is that she was not ANTI National. She loved India (Like Stalin loved soviet union, churchill loved Britain). And many (not all but many) of her dictats and decisions were influenced by her like and patriotism of India. That is the ONE reason we should remember her, 28 years after her tragic death. And that is one reason where her daugther In law has differed in that she has refused to be PRO INDIA and has done everything to undermine the nation she married into.